"Basically, I got to see Rickie Fowler paraded around like a well-groomed poodle at the Westminster Kennel Club."
It's fun to look at the contrast between the handling of Rickie 2.0 Fowler and Ryan Moore, who both made some news Thursday.
Stephanie Wei files an entertaining account of one of those "only-in-New-York" press junkets that help justify some CMO's overinflated salary. "Let's put him at Chelsea Piers!" "Spectacular idea!"
It was supposed to be “really informal” but after being there for five minutes it was obvious that “really informal” doesn’t exist within the Rickie 2.0 hype machine. Basically, I got to see Rickie Fowler paraded around like a well-groomed poodle at the Westminster Kennel Club.
Last week a PR rep asked me to give the general gist of what I was planning to ask him, so Rickie wouldn’t be caught off guard. Question 1: “Do you have a girlfriend?” PLEASE DO NOT ASK THAT. (But that was conveyed very nicely, of course.) Just “stay away from more personal stuff,” the PR lady explained, unless it “comes up naturally.”
I walked in the top deck of the driving range and I was greeted by the two PR people running the show. Small talk, small talk, nice-to-meet-yous ensued and then came Rickie, who politely introduced himself with a welcoming handshake.
“Hi, I’m Rickie.”
Michael Buteau reports for Bloomberg:
The Chattanooga, Tennessee-based custom clubmaker has an agreement with the 26-year-old Moore, who will use its irons and wedges beginning with this week’s HSBC Champions event in China. Moore, the 2004 U.S. Amateur champion, is tied for second at the World Golf Championship tournament at 6-under-par 66.
With many large club companies, such as Adidas AG’s TaylorMade brand and Callaway Golf Co., cutting back endorsement expenses as consumers reduce spending on leisure activities, Moore’s agreement is unique among professional golfers.
“Ryan is going to end up owning a portion of our company,” Ari Techner, Scratch Golf’s chief executive officer, said in a telephone interview. “This kind of speaks to the type of person he is. He likes to do his own thing.”
Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 06:50 PM
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Reader Comments (20)
Obviously Puma are chasing a slightly different consumer and market with Rickie . . . not that there is anything wrong with that . . .
"(politely, of course) that drivers aren’t allowed at Chelsea Piers because Chelsea Piers has this weird rule where you’re not allowed to hit your driver because if a ball lands in the Hudson..."
I guess they don't demo of sell many drivers in the pro shop.
Azinger's options in Liquidmetal expired worthless a little while back.
however, i like that he is trying to do something a little different from the cookie-cutter endorsement mode that currently governs the tour. i hope the scratch thing works out for him. as for the guys for whom it didn't work out, what moore is doing is called taking risk, and it's why he gets to participate in the upside of the company's growth if there is any.
i also think he should market the hipster-sneaker golf shoes he wears. i know a bunch of guys who would buy those.
I don't know if Moore wears these, but I believe this is James Lepp's company. Lepp won the NCAAs and then faded from competitive golf.
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/story.html?id=2f0ae2eb-7a79-40c5-a428-89bd1a26e018
I like Moore. He'll make enough dough in prize money.
As for Fowler, I wonder if he's really so superficial or if he's just young and unschooled in marketing and is being manipulated by the PR people.
I hope it goes great for Scratch Golf but history would indicate that their chances of any real financial success are miniscule and bordering on non-existent.
This isn't a gimick company like LiquidMetals. Unless the economy does something completely crazy, they are going to be around for a long time.
The "no drivers at Chelsea" was supposed to be humor - but it didn't quite get to the knee-slapper level.
Wisconsin - I agree with you in theory - but this bunch of marketing "kids" are cut from the same cloth as the movie guys who keep promising great shows, but the product can't possibly live up to the hype. These Gameboy marketers are going to heap a ton of pressure on a 20 year old with one year of good results as an amateur. Tiger had 7 years of success before turning pro winning 6 national titles. Fowler is pocketing a lot of cash, but his people just made his uphill slope even tougher.
I believe that Norman put up his own money to buy a piece of Cobra rather than take the standard endorsement deals that were out there at the time. Norman lifted the Cobra brand and enjoyed a windfall when Fortune Brands bought Cobra.
Steven, those big putters did fly off the shelves on the Master's win...for a little while. But MacGregor never really amounted to anything, and Ryan Moore ain't no Jack Nicklaus. (that putter was somewhat unique as well, as was the SeeMore when Payne won with it, Scratch products are very nice but not unique)
Keith, I think you ar right, he probably does not make any money.
court, the economy is doing crazy things as we speak and given their price points combined with lack of retail presence I'd bet sales results are very poor at Scratch...just a guess, I'm not an insider either. What I was getting at on the "how does he capitalize" point is that havinng an equity stake in something completely illiquid can be very tough to convert to cash, very very tough.
I did check a channel with a retailer I know in Florida and he was very complimentary of the product produced but said on the customer service side they are abysmal...this is no way to garner any meaningful retail presence. And I kid you not he closed by saying "quite honestly they act like a company in danger of going out of business".
Clearly Ryan isn't overly motivated by money and that's a good thing because I suspect this deal won't bring him any, ever.
I have used Scratch product before and it is very good, comprable in many ways to Miura which is best in class for forged clubs, which is why a lot of the Nationwide players are using their wedges - whether or not they can leverage Ryan Moore and grow the company over time - who knows. They have survived a few years which is a good start - right?
As I said, it is a "ballsy" move for Ryan but could reap a big financial reward while helping a cool little company succeed.
These pros make enough in winnings to last a lifetime so it is a neat story to see a guy pass on the endorsement money if he does not believe in the product. Clearly a VERY different mindset than 99% of PGA pros.
If he happens to win a couple of tournaments next year with those clubs, the banking industry will be envy of his deal with Scratch.
As for Ryan, to me the "ballsy" move was dropping all his endorsements. Now he's at square zero and deciding what to do next.
If his mindset was "I'm ambivilent between having Scratch and XYZ in the bag", and XYZ offered a cash deal but Ryan selected this ownership deal instead, to me that does not add up.
If his mindset was "I'm only going to play with the clubs like the very most most no matter what", and that happened to be Scratch, to me the smart thing for him to do would have been put the Scratch clubs in the bag, sell the bag and hat space to some non-equipment related sponsor...and put the cash in the bank. My bet is that cash will add up to a lot more than this Scratch investment will.
I like Ryan's unconventional attitude, and he's young, but the bottom line is he is a professional athlete and there are a lot of things that can halt the income stream fast (he already had wrist surgery once).
I don't mean to pick on Scratch, clearly they are passionate about the product and after studying their webpage some it's obvious that the product is of the highest quality -- they are artists. But breaking into the equipment market has some of the highest barriers to entry of any industry you can dream up. In addition, while the tour players have a sense of feel so refined that they can tell the difference in quality in the scoring clubs that Scratch offer, 99.9% of the people out there can't. Nor can I see where Scratch offers any technological advantage/edge over other brands (Cobra did with oversized irons, Ping did with cavity backs, Callaway did with oversized drivers). Then there's that pesky customer service side of the biz where they seem to be falling down bigtime.
Bottom line, this is an invesment decision Ryan has made and from my viewpoint it's a lousy choice...only time will tell.
He's playing well now, but is only a few missed cuts away from wishing he was a well-paid endorser instead of a partner of a wedge company with no market share.